Sophteonal
by Draenog Glas
Summary: Shadow must resign himself to the fact that Sonic would possibly be depressed for most of his life, not without the aid of modern psychiatry. And yet, he feels he must take the trash out of his life and make it into something beautiful. "The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.


**_Written for Super Sonic Pizza Delivery._**

**_Quotes several passages from The Catcher in the Rye. This book was written by J.D. Salinger and does not belong to me._**

I took care of him, every day I woke up, till the day the sun died and I had to return to bed. I died, along with it.

He wanted to die, along with it. Yet I refused.

He laid in bed, his body scrawny and his fur a dried up, dull mess. His eyes reeked of sleep. His fingers often twitched when there was a blade. He often spoke of razor blades and how better they made him feel with their silver tongues.

There were the ropes I had to keep away. The liquids that could poison his insides and make them rot. The slits that made him traverse to a colorless world. Plastic bags I had to stow away for he often tried to say his last warm breath in them. I said no. He couldn't do this to himself. He couldn't die. Not after what he had done for me.

He complained of a cold. I was ready to serve him with a breakfast of apple hotcakes with cinnamon glazed onto the syrupy sides, with fruit and a cup of orange juice and a mug of black coffee. I told him I would be there. And he said he could wait. I believed him.

Sonic was diagnosed with severe depression, and I had to take care of him, for the rest of my life. Because he didn't believe in the cures of modern psychiatry. He refused to be admitted in a mental hospital. Straitjackets had scared him. No institutions could save him. Only me. Only me.

I prepare the dish, make it as lovingly as I can. Sonic often sat motionless in the bed, poking his food a few times, then barely eating anything nutritious. I often sat by his side and sung him songs and told him bedtime stories. He liked hearing the stories of J.D. Salinger, the tales of the bananafish and the missing goldfish and of course, that damnable Holden. I must've read him the Catcher in the Rye about twenty times by now.

_"Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them—if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry." _

Gods be praised that the same men who said this inspirational quote was possibly a pedophile. People look to that foolish old man on the hill, spouting out his poetry and whimsical nonsense, just to find out he might want to fuck children.

I open the door. I set one foot inside. I hear Sonic sniffling, possibly crying again at yet another story I told him. I listened intently to his sobs. He could barely attempt to read the many books I gave him, due to his fibromyalgia worsening his vision. He was almost blind. Yet he held this red book with the demoniac horse on the front, and he was trying to read the story from beginning to end. Making his own notes of it. Illegible notes.

"Why do you think he's so depressed, Shadow? How did it all happen?"

I wasn't sure of how depression started. It seemed like something that grew and grew until suddenly you realized you didn't care about life anymore, and life didn't care about you. It went past by without you, while you were in your bed, growing old, life growing younger by the second. Depression never stopped for you. It never stopped for anyone who was sadly affected.

I wasn't sure. I never really did any studies on the book. Just Sonic told me to read it to him often because he could identify with the main character. He felt bad for those who were young and felt like the old grew more plastic everyday.

I tried to help him make up his own mind with the story. I gave him my reading glasses to see if it could help, if at all. He stated that it did, and he sat hunched in his covers, continuing to read by the sickly yellow light.

_"The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one." _

He didn't touch his breakfast for a while. But he never seemed to touch the healthy things I gave him. He never touched any of the hotcakes, drowning sorrowfully under his neglect when he read, read, read…

It was going to entertain him, I guessed. He wasn't going to try to attempt suicide again, as he often was wont to do.

I never went out of the house, except to go to the store, and even then I bring Sonic with me, to make sure he wouldn't try funny things when he was all alone. I had to make my entire house an asylum for him, to make sure he would stay safe. Even if it meant making the rooms full of mattresses and soft walls for him to cry and beat his fists into.

How could I love him still? You ask. He was a former shell of himself. He ached and pained and no longer smiled and laughed and was no longer charming like he used to be. He never seemed to enjoy anything like he used to. Yet, I see that small spark of what he used to be when I spend time with him, rocking him to sleep, acting like some sort of doting mother to make sure he brushed his teeth and put on his pajamas and lull him away from nightmares. I rarely had a break. The only time, was when he was sleeping. And not all of his dreams were happy dreams. Many of them were nightmares.

He would wake up screaming, clawing my entire body, wishing the white pale demons to go away with their long sickly fingernails. He often woke up in the middle of the night and asked me for a glass of water, which I would oblige, then we would sit an hour and a half, talking and trying to make sure he was safe when he slept. He needed to be even safe and secure in his dreams.

He had been ill like this for over ten years.

I am growing old for it, but I'm not growing old for him. The disease ate away at his happiness, but I still see him smiling sometimes, and it wipes all of my weariness away. It was like all I ever wanted to see. For him to be happy, for as little as five minutes. My record was fifteen minutes. Let's aim for higher, I say. And he chuckled, like he used to. And it made my heart happy and the weariness melt like ice.

_"This fall I think you're riding for—it's a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn't permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement's designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn't supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn't supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up before they ever really even got started." _

I couldn't believe them. I couldn't.

When I took him to a specialist, they claimed that without medication, he would be like this for the rest of his life. Miserable, being a lowly bookworm, clinging onto me all the time for protection and assurance, because his brain made him so insecure and lost. They told me I was either a fool who was madly in love with someone who was an even bigger fool, or that I was a masochist. They told me to go on and find some sort of other partner instead, one who was happy and liked to go out and could talk for hours on the theories of the universe and everything on my pain with the loss of Maria.

But that was the thing. I couldn't lose him either. I'd never forgive myself. He reminded me of her, how helpless he was, how he had brief flashes of joy when I was able to bring it to him. I wanted to make him happy because I was sure Maria would've done the same. She would've done everything to everyone to make them happy.

_"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody." _

He asked me when he was done reading again, on why he was afflicted with this same negativity, this pessimism, that was hurting more people, everyday.

I told him I really wasn't sure. It seemed to be something that more people just became more aware of.

"Are more people aware of me? Are they more aware of what I go through, everyday? I mean, when I feel okay, I don't wanna kill myself or anything. I kinda think that's stupid, ya know? Then when I get sad, it's like…nothing matters. That I could just rot in the ground and be fed flowers and no one will ever think of how great of a guy I used to be. But yet those pills…I heard they can make you worse, and I'm not sure if I want to take such a gamble on them."

_"Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody."_

The big difference between Sonic and I is that I would like flowers on my grave. I would like tears, and people grieving, and eventually moving on, and remembering me for the good memories they had.

Then Sonic wants an unmarked grave, to be thrown in the river, forgotten, like he claimed that he was only garbage and nothing else.

I showed him an installation of an artist's piece when we both went out, before Sonic was severely depressed. A man took several fragmented pieces of machinery he took from people's trash and made them into statements, pure poetry using only some creativity and some handiwork. Making something beautiful out of something horrendous and tragic like garbage.

I could take his heart and make it into something beautiful. I could paint it and sculpt it and rearrange it and basically make it into something new and whole and breathtaking.

I just wished that he would realize that there could be something wondrous in another man's trash. And you, you are truly wondrous, and I don't know when you'll ever see it, but I'm willing to put in the work for you to find out.

_"It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to." _


End file.
